New Office

Two weekends ago Spicy Horse Games picked up and moved to a new home. We had been sharing office space with game art outsourcing company Vykarian. But both companies have been growing too quickly, so we moved.
We got lucky and were told of a cool space which had been occupied by a film/tv production company. [...]

Life has been crazy busy, hence the lack of updates. Spicy moved into a beautiful new office. The Grimm project has been humming along. The team has really gelled and is cranking out beautiful work. And today we get to announce the technology we’ve been working with:

 
SPICY HORSE STUDIO SIGNS MULTI-TITLE UNREAL ENGINE 3 LICENSING [...]

Xitang Weekend

One personal embarrassment about the time I’ve spent in China is how little of China I’ve actually seen. Life in Shanghai is hectic and interesting enough - but what’s the point of being in a foreign country if you’re not going to see something of it? Granted, without a decent grasp on the language, [...]

AI.implant - 0$ Licensing Fee

Cool news from the guys over at Engenuity today:
Engenuity will no longer charge a licensing fee for AI.implant and will now offer perpetual source code agreements in exchange for marketing exposure relating to future titles developed with AI.implant.
Qualified Xbox 360 console developers and PLAYSTATION3 game title developers will now have full and complete access [...]

Vins Gagliardi - Chateau Du Charnay

Our buddy Pete Gagliardi over at Vins Gagliardi recently announced a new label in his selection of wines. This continues the series which features dark fairy tale label art by Ken Wong. “Red Riding Hood” is the latest inspiration:

The previous wine in the series was “Rapunzel”, which you can find more info about here.

To get [...]

USATODAY.com - Into the Pixel

Spicy Horse conceptual artist Lin Ran did a series of images during early “Grimm” pre-production. I posted some of these images to my flickr account a while back, like this one, “The Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was”:

These images were entered into the annual “Into the Pixel” competition - “An exhibition of [...]

The “Grimm” Logo

Behold it in all its glory:

The process for choosing a logo can be weird and painful. There’s conflicting opinions on the value of a product’s logo and packaging in general. Would “World of Warcraft” be any less successful if it shipped in a brown paper bag with “WoW” scribbled in crayon on the outside? Would [...]

GameTap brings 500+ PC games to Intel Macs

This is cool:
GameTap today announced that it is expanding its offerings to the Mac community by providing Intel-based Mac users access to its Lite Player, which offers more than 500 new and classic game titles as well as more than 600 streaming videos of original programming from GapeTap TV. “Mac users will now be able [...]

Vykarian + Spicy Horse Team

Whew! That’s a lot of people. The Shanghai Vykarian/Spicy team has grown to over 120 people since the start of the year.

If you’re looking for a great photographer in Shanghai, be sure to check out Primo’s website or email him at primoyuan [at] 163.com - He took some great pictures of our office and staff [...]

Mainstream Download #2

Just yesterday I posted a note regarding the reemergence of downloadable content - and the relationship of this to casual games. Today I read the following news on Gamasutra:
Telltale Gets $6 Million In Investments
Sam & Max developers Telltale Games have announced the closing of a six million dollar round of investments from Granite and [...]

GameTap New Service Offerings

Until this week I was hesitant to talk about any of the cool things going on over at GameTap. I figured some astute readers might sense a deal in the making before the announcement. But now that we’re “official” I’m free to espouse my enthusiasm for their service and their model.
First up - 1UP.com is [...]

Tale of Tales Interview

In my opinion the world needs more game studios which are free and willing to explore the concept of “interactive arts”. It often seems that not enough attention is paid to the narrative and visual expression potential in video games.
One team that’s doing beautiful things in the area of game concept exploration is Tale of [...]

Games Radar - Grimm Announcement

An interview with me is running over at Games Radar. Additional details about the new project along with some concept images are featured in the article.
Producer and designer American McGee didn’t win much love from critics or fans with his last two titles: Bad Day L.A. and Scrapland. But making games safe for consumption by [...]

New Business Model

Recently we’ve been trying to fill a few remaining job openings at Spicy Horse. The process of building a team in Shanghai is made difficult by the fact that there is very little pre-existing game industry to speak of. In the US you can see hotbeds of development grow organically from local seed studios - [...]

Once again… Grimm

It’s (re-)official now! Chuck Osborn at PC Gamer has written the first preview of the new game we’ve been secretly developing for Gametap: “American McGee’s Grimm” (And apparently now it’s OK for me to talk about it.)
After (justifiably) taking me to task on Bad Day LA, Chuck expresses excitement at what will be a “spiritual [...]

…

Uh, forget I said anything about the new game. Apparently I wasn’t supposed to let any cats out of any bags just yet. So… nothing to see here. Move along.
Anyway… new office!
I thought I’d also take a moment to post some images of our new studio. After months of renovation it finally feels like home.
[...]

Dark Artist #2

Just FYI… The Dark Artist opening has been filled. We saw many, many cool submissions. Thank you to everyone who wrote in!
Over the past few weeks the Spicy Horse team has grown by leaps and bounds. Its ranks are now filled by a wonderful collection of global adventurers, industry vets, and first timers - all [...]

My friend Alex paid good money to have me converted into a hobo. I guess we should all take a moment to appreciate the result:

This image now lives proudly among the “Hobo Names” collection created by Ape Lad. Click the link if you want to see more hobos.

Dark Artist

Ken Wong makes prettier job opening ads than me…

If you’re qualified and interested, then please drop Ken or me a line.

Growth

Not that you could tell it by reading this blog, but things around here have been absolutely insane. Alongside a two week trip to the US where Xin and I did sales for Vykarian, and where I visited GDC to do a little PR for the new game title, work in the Shanghai studio has [...]